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(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

In a recent post I wrote about the promise and challenges of leapfrogging 2.0 –

If the value of a “social” network (Reed’s Law) is indeed exponentially higher than the value of a telecommunication (Metcalfe’s Law) or a broadcast network (Sarnoff’s Law), there is significant leapfrogging potential available to BRIC countries. A social network (like MobiChange) that mimics the any-to-any nature of Reed’s network on SMS can create tremendous value in the BRIC countries. However, the more I read about leapfrogging the digital divide, the more convinced I am that leapfrogging is much easier in theory than in practice.

Leapfrogging is the idea that poor countries can skip over stages in technology adoption (especially large-scale, industrial, infrastructure-heavy technologies) and directly adopt newer, better technologies (especially light-weight, distributed, ecologically sustainable digital technologies).

The classic example of leapfrogging is the ubiquitous adoption of mobile phones in the developing world.

However, it seems that mobile phone adoption is the only valid example of leapfrogging and the widespread diffusion of most digital technologies is dependent on the existence of a solid social, economic and industrial infrastructure.

I’ll be revisiting the themes of digital divide 2.0 and leapfrogging 2.0 frequently on this blog, but here are some thoughts on the challenges (the myth?) of leapfrogging.

Jamais Cascio in WorldChanging (December 2004) –

Leapfrogging can happen accidentally (such as when the only systems around for adoption are better than legacy systems elsewhere), situationally (such as the adoption of decentralized communication for a sprawling, rural countryside), or intentionally (such as policies promoting the installation of WiFi and free computers in poor urban areas).

[But, most] leapfrog examples haven’t yet led to society-wide transformation (although it ishappening with mobile phones, and, in the case of Linux use, may be happening soon in Brazil and China); and the “leapfrog” technologies are largely those which don’t require a pre-existing grid — solar power, mobile phones, wifi, etc.. The important thing to note is that the “leapfrog” isn’t in the specific technologies themselves (which are no better than those in the West), but in the infrastructure, the rapid growth of decentralized, ad-hoc, flexible networks.

Leapfrogging doesn’t always work. There may be government policies or lender mandates requiring the adoption of certain infrastructure technologies which made sense a decade or two ago, but are less useful now. There may be resistance for reasons of tradition or marketing. And chosen leapfrog technologies may simply not work well.

Kevin Kelly in The Technium (March 2006) –

I believe you can not have a rise in new infrastructure technology without having a rise in old infrastructure. To a degree that is invisible to us, new tech sits on a foundation of old tech. Despite the vital layer of intangible activities which constitute our modern economy, a huge portion of what goes on each day is fairly industrial in scope: moving atoms, rearranging atoms, mining atoms, burning atoms, refining atoms, stacking atoms.

I don’t think you can do calculus until you do counting; I don’t think you can do cell phones until you do land phones. And I don’t think you can build a digital infrastructure without including an industrial process.

Just like the predominance of lower functions in our brain, industrial process predominate the technium, even though they are gilded with informational veneers. The demassification of high technology is at times an illusion. It is not that information technology has no mass, that it lives in an abstract virtual world. Rather, high technology is the embedment of information into materials, the seamless fusion of bits and atoms. It is adding intelligence to industry, rather than removing industry and leaving only information.

In this way, there is no hi-tech without low tech, and no leapfrogging over low tech. We may find times when a new technology races forward, and the velocity of the new outpaces the velocity of the old, but even then we won’t see the myth of leapfrogging.

The Economist (February 2008) reporting on World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects 2008 report –

Technology is spreading to emerging markets faster than it has ever done anywhere. The World Bank looked at how much time elapsed between the invention of something and its widespread adoption (defined as when 80% of countries that use a technology first report it). For 19th-century technologies the gap was long: 120 years for trains and open-hearth steel furnaces, 100 years for the telephone. For aviation and radio, invented in the early 20th century, the lag was 60 years. But for the PC andCAT scans the gap was around 20 years and for mobile phones just 16. In most countries, most technologies are available in some degree.

But the degree varies widely. In almost all industrialised countries, once a technology is adopted it goes on to achieve mass-market scale, reaching 25% of the market for that particular device. Usually it hits 50%. In the World Bank’s (admittedly incomplete) database, there are 28 examples of a new technology reaching 5% of the market in a rich country; of those, 23 went on to achieve over 50%. In other words, if something gets a foothold in a rich country, it usually spreads widely.

In emerging markets this is not necessarily so. The bank has 67 examples of a technology reaching 5% of the market in developing countries—but only six went on to capture half the national market. Where it did catch on, it usually spread as quickly as in the West. But the more striking finding is that the spread was so rare. Developing countries have been good at getting access to technology—and much less good at putting it to widespread use. As a result, technology use in developing countries is highly concentrated.

Not only is there a technology gap between emerging economies and the West, and another within emerging economies: there are also surprising differences between apparently comparable emerging economies.

Broadly, two sets of obstacles stand in the way of technological progress in emerging economies. The first is their technological inheritance. Most advances are based on the labours of previous generations: you need electricity to run computers and reliable communications for modern health care, for instance. So countries that failed to adopt old technologies are at a disadvantage when it comes to new ones. Mobile phones, which require no wires, are a prominent exception.

The other set of problems has to do with the intangible things that affect a country’s capacity to absorb technology: education; R&D; financial systems; the quality of government.

The Economist (February 2008) –

A country’s capacity to absorb and benefit from new technology depends on the availability of more basic forms of infrastructure. This has clear implications for development policy. Building a fibre-optic backbone or putting plasma screens into schools may be much more glamorous than building electrical grids, sewerage systems, water pipelines, roads, railways and schools. It would be great if you could always jump straight to the high-tech solution, as you can with mobile phones. But with technology, as with education, health care and economic development, such short-cuts are rare. Most of the time, to go high-tech, you need to have gone medium-tech first.

Coming up next: why is the ubiquitous adoption of mobile phones the exception that proves the rule.

• The Three Laws of Networked Technologies (0)
• Welcoming Ken Banks and Dina Mehta to the MobiChange Team (2)
• The Unthinkable Future of Marketing (19)
• The Simple Idea Behind MobiChange (4)
• Thank You for Sharing Such Great Feedback on MobiChange (1)